IPHO acts to halt typhoid fever that downs 30 in North Cotabato
HEALTH • 08:45 AM Tue Jan 4, 2022
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By:
Edwin O. Fernandez
KIDAPAWAN CITY – Health officials in North Cotabato have sent a team to help the municipal health office of Pikit town to contain rising number of persons with typhoid fever.
As of Tuesday, the North Cotabato Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) said least 30 persons have been hospitalized due typhoid fever that hit a remote village of Manaulanan.
On Tuesday, Dr. Eva Rabaya, North Cotabato provincial health officer, said the 30 patients were all residents of Barangay Manaulanan, many of whom have taken unsafe drinking water since last week of December.
Manaulanan is a remote village with no potable drinking water. Residents rely on commercially available mineral drinking water in gallons or bottles but the indigents take drinking water from water pumps and open wells.
“No one was reported to have died among the patients,” Dr. Rabaya said in a DXND radio interview.
Quoting a report from Pikit municipal health office, Dr. Rabaya said the possible cause of the typhoid fever was the drinking water that people sourced from open wells and water pumps.
Many of the patients were children who are now in various hospitals in Pikit.
She said the Integrated Provincial Health Office has sent a team to help the town health office in monitoring and medication of patients.
The team also brought medicine and water purification tablets to help prevent water borne diseases.